Mughal
Bronze Knight of the Realm
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EQ Next: #1 Next gen MMO
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Reht
Molten Core Raider
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Mughal
Bronze Knight of the Realm
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Dandai
<WoW Guild Officer>
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Seems unlikely, but I wouldn't say impossible. My experience with small business financing has been that they require a modest amount of collateral and a personal guarantee of loan repayment.
Then again, Pantheon found investors. It would only take a handful of investors with equivalent... business acumen... to reach the purchasing price for SOE. The writedowns were so high that it couldn't have been sold for THAT much.
Then again, Pantheon found investors. It would only take a handful of investors with equivalent... business acumen... to reach the purchasing price for SOE. The writedowns were so high that it couldn't have been sold for THAT much.
Mughal
Bronze Knight of the Realm
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the deal would have been acquiring 100% of SOE for a small sum, fire 50% of the personnel, replace all the management team, have all IP. the issue was that SOE was bleeding cash so it would have absorbed $50-70m over two years in the worst case scenario before turning it around, $20m in the best case one.
It would have been a group of investors experienced in the videogames space putting a part of the money while taking an active role and then the bulk of the funding would have been provided by larger investment funds. the money would not have come from Storybricks.
the biggest issue was that Sony was not willing to sell 100% and instead wanting to sell 51% and take a stake in the acquirer. This was creative accounting to sell SOE at an inflated price financed by Sony itself. So it would look like in their balance sheet that they owned like 49% of a company that was worth $200m+ in addition to having a stake in the acquirer worth millions (because it had 51% of SOE). All this with little money exchanging hands. You have to understand that this is how Sony has operated for years in Japan and allowed to do so because 1) all the largest Japanese conglomerates do the same 2) Sony going belly up poses a systemic risk to the Japanese economy so they are allowed to keep their assets priced at fantasy prices. Last time I did the count they had more assets than Microsoft, Facebook and Google combined despite being like under 3% of their capitalization.
At the time of the discussion SOE was such a deteriorating disaster that the investors were not willing to negotiate jack shit with Sony, and the moment Sony put forward their request they walked away instantly. Sony few months later finally relented and gave away 100% of SOE for zero to Columbus Nova as long as losses were going to be covered for the first year with minimal layoffs.
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Reading that makes me wonder how things might've turned out for the EQ franchise had a company other than SOE bought Verant Interactive back in 1999 (or whatever year it was).
Mughal
Bronze Knight of the Realm
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We are in what if territory but here's the gist: was convinced that the EQN/Landmark split was a mistake and they should have converged back into one. the biggest issue with that project was that it went into full production before the core design was finalized, prototyped and tested. So every head of the project was building something different, until the very last day it was not known if the advertised featured could have ever worked with each other in a world made by destructible voxels.
My position would have been to kill Landmark and scale down EQN as it had way too many features and Smed kept overpromising so no matter what would have been shipped people would have been disappointed by it. Potentially rebooting the whole thing. You have seen with Smed's new company how he operates, he overpromised a bazillion features and then shipped an incomplete game instead of something polished but with only single player and with one or two classes.
there is a bigger discussion about AAA game development and how the industry changed but SOE didnt
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pharmakos
soʞɐɯɹɐɥd
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In what year did Verant acquire 989 Studios then? Maybe I'm getting those two mixed up.
Nvm. That article linked above explains it.
Muligan
Trakanon Raider
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So which version of EQNext really made it the furthest? I'm assuming the Disney version we saw most recently. Was there ever a version that would have bee more like a true EQ successor?
What was Holly's position while you were there and how is she compared to Ponytail? There are times I feel for her as she probably had a real passion for the game but not essentially just does as she is told. Maybe i'm wrong but I actually had some hope we she was put in charge of the brand but not a lot.
Mughal
Bronze Knight of the Realm
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- it's not that there were multiple versions being rebooted but mostly a continuum of changes to the project. it started with some core design points that with hindsight looked a lot like Terraria, only in 3D, and then it was iterated from there. The problem was that when the designers were iterating ideas the engineers were trying to figure out if the platform was ever going to work and the art team was producing designs without any understanding how these models were going to be built (destructible? baked mesh? nobody knew). Towards the end of the project it became clear that a truly destructible voxel world was never going to work - and I mean this was the prime example of the issue with the project: it should have been addressed in pre-production whether designers could have voxels or not and what was technically feasible and realistic.
- the "Disney" version was that because graphics were getting better it was not necessarily the best choice to strive to look like Black Desert, as it would not have aged well. The human forms were interesting, the other races felt rushed and just placeholders, but it showed the fundamental disjointed nature of EQN: one team was building a fully customizable world with voxel and AI, while another built character models that had no customization whatsoever beyond hairstyles. Ultimately there was nobody in charge that was coming to work or set a roadmap of that game and it showed. It was a clusterfuck from the start. And the part that really annoyed me is that the team was crazy talented, as they picked the best people in the company to work on that project. However big disclaimer for all my posts: HINDSIGHT IS 20/20 AND IT'S EASY TO CRITICIZE AFTER THE EVENT.
- Holly was in charge of EQ2 I think? not sure about EQ1 but she was not part of EQN. She and another *amazing* designer were cranking out an incredible amount of content for EQ2 and it was a pity because nobody really played that game and it would have been better served on EQN. Obviously the guy was fired instead.
Ultimately SOE had a lot of games that were not sustainable and were never financially viable as the development process was broken.
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Mughal
Other than the obvious reasons (no revenue), do you happen to know why they shut down the original PlanetSide? Was there something that triggered it? It was seeing a lot of activity in it's final days due to a private player made hack being used to freeze other hackers with GM popup windows and keep the game clean. Did this contribute to it? Was wondering if this was the cause or if it was just a coincidence.
Mughal
Bronze Knight of the Realm
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No idea, sorry
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Muligan
Trakanon Raider
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Mughal
Thanks for the insight. I guess they were really flying with blinders on and for whatever reason no one snapped the leadership out of it. Sounds like SoE had some really underutilized people. What a shame. I really hope that at some point we see another EQ game. I hate for this to fall to the same fate as Sierra and their games.